poetry

Before time ever was, You fashioned the divine handiwork of heaven and hell– out of compassion and rage. Your banquet is in heaven, and I am empty-handed, since I have no path to paradise. trans. Juan Cole From Whinfield 16.

The idol asked the pagan, “Do you know why you started bowing down to me?” –“It was because the One who looks out through your eyes shone his light on me!” trans. Juan Cole from Whinfield 14

Where’s the smoke from my fire around here? Where’s the profit on my investment around here? As for the guy who called me a bar fly, now really, where’s the bar around here? trans. Juan Cole from Whinfield 13

If you are looking for love, try to attract every heart. On the path of the Presence, try to entice every seeker. A hundred holy shrines made of water and clay are not worth a single heart. Why make pilgrimage to a shrine when you can attract a heart? Trans. Juan Cole From Whinfield 18 […]

When I die, prepare my body in wine, and in place of a eulogy lift a glass! On Resurrection Day you’ll find my dust stirring beneath the threshold of the bar. translated by Juan Cole From Whinfield 6 ___ For the life and thought of the Iranian humanist, Omar Khayyam, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of […]

This world that was our home for a brief spell never brought us anything but pain and grief; its a shame that not one of our problems was ever solved. We depart with a thousand regrets in our hearts. ___ For the life and thought of the Iranian humanist, Omar Khayyam, see the Stanford Encyclopedia […]

At dawn a shout     awoke us in      that watering hole… you crazed         carousing             drunk! Get up and grab that bottle    let’s finish what we started             before fate starts to finish us. Trans Juan Cole from Whinfield 1 (Khayyam uses a lot of bawdy language, which embarrassed the Victorians. I think it sounds contemporary, like a […]

In these one,     two,        three days       a lifetime has passed, like cascading waters     or a desert squall. But regret for two days     never comes to mind:        the one that hasn’t arrived             and the one that long since passed – Omar Khayyam Trans. by Juan Cole from Whinfield 26 Revised. For the […]

Ryan Croken on translating the mystical poet Rumi, and on how Muslims are translated and mistranslated in America. Jalal al-Din Rumi was born in Afghanistan, wrote mainly in Persian, and lived much of his life in Konya, in what is now Turkey. He has some mixed Persian/ Arabic and Persian/ Greek verses, as well. Coleman […]